Parental alienation can be a serious problem during a divorce or in the immediate aftermath. It essentially refers to a scenario where one parent intentionally tries to get a child to keep their distance from the other coparent. Their goal may be to manipulate them so that the child refuses to have any relationship with the other person.
This is often something that happens during a high-conflict divorce. One parent may try to get the child to push the other person away to limit the amount of time that they spend together, potentially by blaming them for the divorce or even lying about their actions prior to or after the divorce. For instance, a parent could throw away birthday cards that the other coparent sent and tell the child that the cards never arrived, implying that the other coparent doesn’t care about them.
Why is this a problem?
This can be a serious problem in child custody disputes. After all, once they reach a certain age, children may be able to express their preference for physical custody. Courts tend to err on the side of shared custody, giving both parents a chance to see the child.
But if parental alienation is occurring, the child may be manipulated to say that they don’t want to maintain a relationship with the other coparent and they don’t want to spend any custody time with them. A parent who knows they won’t get sole custody otherwise may engage in parental alienation as a way to rig the system in their favor.
Parents don’t have to get along, but they should strive to put their children first and should not engage in manipulation, deception and other means of parental alienation. When this happens, those involved in the high-conflict divorce case need to know what legal options they have.